The Prophet Muhammad and the Warrior Saints of the Orthodox Church: Challenging a Byzantine Polemic Against Islam
Sixteenth-century Ottoman miniature of ʿAli with his famous sword at the Battle of Badr from Siyer-i Nebi by Mustafa bin Vali (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
While discussing religion with an imam during his captivity by the Turks, St. Gregory Palamas compared the Prophet Muhammad to Alexander the Great, arguing that both men had achieved success by worldly means, i.e., warfare. He went onto claim that Muhammad had spread Islam by conquest, whereas Jesus had preached a peaceful message that had not inspired any violence. Palamas seems to have believed that this supposed dissimilitude between Muhammad and Jesus proved the former’s message false. Furthermore, the claim that the Prophet was impious because he had taken part in warfare and had allegedly spread Islam by the sword was not unique to Palamas, but was perhaps the most common Byzantine polemic used against Islam for centuries. In fact, even after Constantinople fell to the forces of Mehmet II the Conqueror in 1453 (or perhaps because of it), the old Byzantine polemic continued to live on, being employed in discussions of Islam by St. Maximos the Greek, St. Justin Popović, Metropolitan Ierotheos Vlachos, and others. But as we will soon see, the polemic is more than a little problematic, as it misrepresents early Islamic history and seemingly ignores the Eastern Orthodox Church’s rich tradition of warrior saints.
When Muhammad began to preach the message of Islam among the polytheists of Mecca, he was met with a great deal of resistance, particularly among the leaders of his own Quraysh tribe. For faith in the one God of Abraham was seen by the powerful as an existential threat to the religious, political, and economic norms of Arab tribal society; in other words, all the things from which they derived their authority. With the greater part of the Meccan elite squarely opposed to Islam, Muhammad and his early followers found themselves persecuted, ostracized, tortured, and at times killed for their faith. Yet, it was not until the polytheists had forced the Muslims to abandon their homes and possessions in Mecca and flee to Medina—an event known as the Hijra—that Muhammad is said to have been given divine sanction to fight back:
Those who have been attacked are permitted to take up arms because they have been wronged—God has the power to help them—those who have been driven unjustly from their homes only for saying, ‘Our Lord is God.’ If God did not repel some people by means of others, many monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, where God’s name is much invoked, would have been destroyed (Q 22:39-40).
As we can see from this passage, Muslims were to engage in warfare as a means to defend themselves and their religion. For it had been the willingness of other communities centred around faith in the one God, i.e., Jews and Christians, to fight in self-defence that had prevented them from being destroyed by aggressive unbelievers.
From an Islamic perspective, an authentic holy war is a jihad, that is, a righteous struggle in the way of God. This is why the Qurʾan calls those who die fighting in holy war martyrs, or shuhadaʾ. For instance, in order to comfort the loved ones of the Muslim soldiers who fell at the Battle of Badr in 624, the following verses were revealed to the Prophet,
Do not think of those who have been killed in God’s way as dead. They are alive with their Lord, well provided for, happy with what God has given them of His favour; rejoicing that for those they have left behind who have yet to join them there is no fear, nor will they grieve; [rejoicing] in God’s blessing and favour, and that God will not let the reward of the believers be lost (Q 3:169-71).
The martyr is the one who lays down their life in total submission to God.
To understand the Islamic concept of holy war, one need look no further than the example of the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, ʿAli ibn Abi Talib. Before the fighting between the Muslim and Meccan armies commenced at the Battle of the Trench, or Khandaq, in 627, the much-feared Qurayshi champion, ʿAmr ibn Abd al-Wudd, challenged anyone willing among the Muslims to face off against him in single combat. ʿAli fearlessly accepted. While Muhammad gave the others a chance to volunteer in his cousin’s place, they all remained silent. Having overwhelmed ʿAmr in the duel, ʿAli came into position to strike a fatal blow, but to everyone’s surprise, he appeared to hesitate. Later, when asked why he did so, ʿAli explained that just as he was about to claim victory, ʿAmr had spat in his face and insulted his mother, and if he had killed him at that moment, it would have been out of anger and pride. Instead, he waited to compose himself before successfully completing the contest. In the Masnavi, Jalal al-Din Rumi immortalizes the episode,
[ʿAli] said, ‘I use my sword the way God’s planned,
Not for my body but by God’s command;
I am God’s lion, not the one of passion—
My actions testify to my religion:
“You did not throw when you threw,” [Q 8:17] God has said:
I’m just a sword the Sun swings at your head;
I’ve moved the baggage of my self away,
“All but God’s non-existent,” I now say.”
As the words put in ʿAli’s mouth by the Sufi poet so eloquently demonstrate, true holy warfare is a righteous struggle in the service of God, and not a means for satisfying an individual’s bloodlust, greed, or ego.
It is also important to note that Muhammad viewed Christians as fellow worshippers of the one God and never sought to convert them by force. We read in the Qurʾan, “Thou wilt find the nearest of them in affection toward those who believe to be those who say, ‘We are Christians.’ That is because among them are priests and monks, and because they are not arrogant” (5:82). In Sirat Rasul Allah, Ibn Ishaq relates how the Prophet even allowed Christians to pray in his mosque in Medina. Moreover, when news spread to Mecca that the Byzantines had lost control of Jerusalem in 614 (or perhaps Damascus in 613) to the Sassanian Empire, Muhammad and his followers were disturbed by the fact that Christians had been bested in battle by followers of a non-Abrahamic faith. In response, God revealed Surat al-Rum, or The Romans/Byzantines, which promised that the Byzantines would soon prevail over their Zoroastrian rival (Q 30:1-5). Further, while the Prophet clashed with Byzantine forces later in life, like his well-known conflicts with Jewish tribes, it was more a matter of Hijazi politics than religion.
Ninth-Century Byzantine miniature of St. Constantine the Great at the Battle of Milvian from a Greek collection of the homilies of St. Gregory the Theologian (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Muhammad leading men into battle as God’s representative may be seen as a continuation of the military traditions of the Old Testament. For a number of the Hebrew figures whom the Orthodox Church counts among its righteous (essentially, pre-Christian saints) are remembered in no small part because of their willingness to take up arms in God’s name. For instance, Joshua led the conquest of Cannan (Book of Joshua), Gideon and his small band of men defeated the Midianites (Judg. 7:1-25), and David famously overcame the Philistine champion, Goliath, in single combat (1 Sam. 17:1-58). While prophets like Moses, Samuel, and Elijah may not have been soldiers, they are still portrayed by the scripture as having demanded great violence be inflicted upon God’s enemies. Yet, none of these individuals are criticized by the Orthodox tradition for such behaviour, but are instead reverently depicted upon the walls and ceilings of churches and called upon in prayer to intercede on behalf of humanity before the throne of God.
However, it must also be acknowledged that Jesus showed his followers another way. For instance, when the Apostles James and John evoked the memory of Elijah as a precedent for asking God to rain fire upon a Samaritan village that would not receive them, Jesus rebuked his followers in no uncertain terms: “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them” (Luke 9:51-6). Moreover, when Peter cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest at Gethsemane, Christ commanded him to put away his sword, “for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matt. 26:51-2), and healed the maimed man (Luke 22:51). In fact, Jesus even challenged the reciprocal justice of the Mosaic Law: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” (Matt. 5:38-9). It is clear that violence of any kind had no place in the Messiah’s ministry.
During Christianity’s first three centuries, its followers generally responded peacefully to Rome’s persecution of them and their faith. Even the warrior saints of the early Church, e.g., George, Demetrius, and Theodore Tiron, are remembered less for having taken part in battle—after all, they had served in the military of a pagan empire—but rather for having been tortured and executed for refusing to renounce their faith in Christ. That being said, the Orthodox Church commemorates a number of saints associated with holy warfare. For instance, arguably the most famous element of Emperor Constantine the Great’s hagiography is the miracle associated with the Battle of the Bridge of Milvian in 312. While there are different versions of the story, pious accounts usually state that on the night before he defeated Maxentius for control of Rome, Constantine was given a vision in the sky of a cross bearing the inscription, “In this sign, conquer.” In response, he had his men mark their shields with the Christian symbol as a way to help guarantee victory. As emperor of Rome, Constantine not only legalized Christianity but promoted it by building numerous churches and shrines, facilitating a clearer definition of doctrine, and encouraging countless pagans to receive baptism. Because of this, the Orthodox Church has long interpreted Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge as a great miracle, and reveres him, along with his mother, Empress Helen, as a saint “equal to the apostles.”
In the Slavic Orthodox tradition, there are a number of saints who are remembered in particular for their willingness to take up arms against non-Orthodox armies. For instance, St. Aleksandr Nevskii is revered, especially among Russians, for defending thirteenth-century Rusʾ against invading Catholic Crusaders from the West, namely, the Swedes and the Teutonic Knights. Moreover, according to traditional Russian accounts, before leading his troops against Mamai’s Golden Horde army at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, St. Dmitrii Donskoi visited the Trinity Lavra outside of Moscow in order to receive St. Sergii of Radonezh’s blessing. Not only did the holy abbot bless Dmitrii, but he also provided the Rusʾ army with two of his monks. It is claimed that one of the monks, St. Aleksandr Peresvet, took on the Mongol champion in mounted single combat, during which both warriors were killed—though, only the saint’s body remained on its horse. Furthermore, the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović as a martyr for having died fighting the Ottomans at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.
St. Sergii of Radonezh blessing St. Dmitrii Donskoi before the Battle of Kulikovo. Trinity Lavra of St. Sergii by Ernest Lissner (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Interestingly, there are also Orthodox saints whose opponents on the battlefield were other Orthodox Christians. For instance, St. Andrei Bogoliubskii, who ruled as grand prince of Vladimir and Suzdal, famously sent a coalition army to sack Kyiv in 1169. Moreover, while the Zaporozhian Cossack St. Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi played a key role in repelling the invading Ottomans from Khotyn, he also led his forces onto Moscow in 1618 in an attempt to help place the Polish Catholic prince Władysław IV Vasa on the Russian throne. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Metropolitan Epifanii of Kyiv declared Sahaidachnyi the patron saint of the Ukrainian armed forces.
It seems that besides its negative and inaccurate portrayal of early Islamic warfare, the foremost issue with the above-mentioned Byzantine polemic is its implicit portrayal of Jesus’s pacifism as an indispensable element of the Orthodox Church’s criteria for evaluating one’s sanctity. The polemic condemns the Prophet for not having lived according to a standard, i.e., pacifism, that the Church holds neither the righteous of the Old Testament nor the warrior saints of the Christian era to. Moreover, there is a reason why Metropolitan Georges Khodr has called Muhammad the last of the Abrahamic line. For in many respects, his life, including his participation in holy warfare, would fit seamlessly within the pages of the Hebrew Bible. In acknowledging and studying the similarities between Muhammad and the warrior saints of the Church, Orthodox Christians will perhaps be able to see early Islamic warfare in a new light and also gain greater respect for the Prophet who fought for his people’s right to worship the God of Abraham in polytheist Arabia.